Most of Montreal cantor Gideon Zelermyer’s weeks follow a similar pattern. He sings with the Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue choir. He teaches students preparing for bar mitzvahs. He presides over weddings and funerals.

But this week will end on a different note. He heads to New York on Sunday to attend the 60th annual Grammy Awards. Zelermyer will be sitting with his fingers crossed. He is in the running for a Grammy along with the late Leonard Cohen and the Shaar choir for their work on You Want It Darker, the first track on Cohen’s 14th and final album of the same name. The voice behind that towering, operatic-like rendering on this chorus is that of tenor supreme Zelermyer.

Oh yeah, the category for which Zelermyer et al are nominated is … Best Rock Performance? Go figure. They will be up against more traditional rockers: the late Chris Cornell (The Promise), the Foo Fighters (Run), Kaleo (No Good) and Nothing More (Go to War).

“To be in that category is mystifying,” muses Zelermyer, 42. “Bon Jovi, it ain’t. But who’s going to quibble about a Grammy nomination in any category?”

The Cohen album also netted a second Grammy nomination for Steer Your Way for Best American Roots Performance — which is almost as bewildering a category as the other.

“This has been a bizarre, strange, wondrous journey ,” says Zelermyer, a Rhode Island native who moved to Montreal 17 years ago and has been the Shaar cantor the last 14 years.

The single You Want It Darker came out on Sept. 21, 2016; the album came out a month later; and Cohen died Nov. 7 that year. Zelermyer performed cantorial duties at a secret family funeral for Cohen in Montreal; and a month later, Cohen’s family brought Zelermyer and the Shaar choir to Los Angeles to sing at a memorial service.

Zelermyer and the choir were later involved in a whirlwind series of concert tributes to Cohen, from an event at the Rialto Theatre to a Montreal 375th concert event on Mount Royal with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the magnificent Bell Centre homage in November, also featuring Sting, Elvis Costello, Lana Del Rey and Adam Cohen, Leonard’s son.

What’s most fascinating about Zelermyer’s collaboration with Leonard Cohen is that they only met once. They had been corresponding regularly through emails over a 10-year period. Leonard had recorded his vocals for the album in L.A., while Zelermyer did his in a studio in Montreal under the aegis of producer Adam.

“We met at the record launch in Los Angeles — the same day Bob Dylan was announced as winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. They asked for Leonard’s thoughts on that. He said: ‘Giving Dylan a Nobel for literature is like pinning a medal on the side of Mount Everest for being the highest peak.’

“Like everything with Leonard, you have to parse that. Essentially, he was saying everybody knows Dylan is great — so what are you giving him a prize for?”

Ironically, many felt Cohen should have been the one to receive that honour.

Zelermyer concedes he never saw any of this attention coming.

“You just never know what can come your way. I’m a cantor, which means I’m a religious functionary. My portfolio is music, esthetics and liturgy. I’m that little dot on the pulpit, up to 65 rows away from where people are sitting. The rest has been luck.

“But I like to think there are a lot of other elements to my life. As a result of my work, I’ve been fortunate to meet some amazing people.”

Apart from the Cohens, Zelermyer is buddies with MSO maestro Kent Nagano — with whom he has worked and will work with again — and Father John Walsh, recently named to the Order of Canada.

Zelermyer has also hooked up with up-and-coming Canadian singer Basia Bulat, who did a stirring rendition of Closing Time with Adam Cohen at the Bell Centre concert. Zelermyer is slated for a recording session with her in March.

You Want It Darker won the 2017 Canadian Juno Award last April for Album of the Year.

Zelermyer has even managed to find space in his home for the Juno he received for it. No small task, either, since the trophy must compete with his Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots memorabilia. Zelermyer, a fanatical sports fan, loves all teams Boston — save for the cursed Bruins. Since moving here, he has become a diehard Habs fan and has even crooned the national anthems at the Bell Centre.

“My record is 3-0, too, so I don’t know why they don’t ask me to sing more,” cracks Zelermyer, holding court at the home he shares with his Montreal-born wife, Michelle, their two young sons and puppy Fenway — named, natch, for the home of his beloved Red Sox.

This past week has been particularly hectic. He performed cantorial duties at the funeral of Red Fisher on Wednesday when he toasted the renowned Montreal Gazette sports writer with a shot of Chivas Regal at graveside with the Fisher family and Ken Dryden, among others.

Zelermyer has also been hard at work writing his yearly Sabbath-music sermon for this Saturday’s services at the Shaar.

“All I’ll say is that the sermon focuses on rock.”

But he does cryptically mention that his favourite rocker is Eric Clapton — “who has, after all, been compared to God.”

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